Saundra

Disc 3 from KCM's Build & Burn offers the following DVD options: Intro Trim and Tone Intervals Premix Credits The Intro also appears on disc 1 and disc 2 and it is a one minute and 39 seconds in length. Trim and Tone Intervals is the workout and it clocks in at 24:35.  Kelly slows down the tempo in this workout quite a bit. You are performing most of the moves in a very control manner.  This workout alternates cardio athletic moves with weighted dumbbell moves. You are doing all moves for two sets.  Kelly does offer variation on some of the moves. There are two premixes on this DVD: Cardio Only (14:48) Dumbbells Only (15:06) Trim and Tone Intervals - 4 stars 

Disc 2 of KCM's Build & Burn workout system features Lower Body Tabata and Kettle Bell Kickbox fusion. Lower Body Tabata clocks in at 26:31and uses a pair of dumbbells and a band.  There are some exercises where you use your own body weight. After the warm up, you move into the workout where you are doing each exercise for 20 seconds.   Each move is repeated for four sets.  Rest are kept to a minimum. Kettle Bell Kick Box Fusion clocks in at 26:14.   Kelly alternates kettle bell moves with kick box moves.  All moves are performed for 30 seconds and for 2 sets. On many of the moves, prior to the move starting Kelly counts you in with a 4, 3, 2, count. Throughout the workout, Kelly offers tips and modifications you can do. There are two other cast members but no one is really showing any modifications.  Super up tempo music in this one.  You can uses a dumbbell in place of a kettle bell. Disc 2 contains 10 premixes ranging in time from 15:15 to 34:16. Lower Body Ta

Disc 1 of Build & Burn features two workouts. They are Cardio Core and Upper Body Superset. Cardio Core clocks in at 27:39 and it features an optional step.  Kelly alternates  cardio moves with core based moves. All the core moves are functional and/or body weight exercises.  The cardio moves are athletic in nature. With each move you doing two sets of 30 seconds on and 10 seconds off. There are two other participants. The participants show various modifications throughout. Upper Body Supersets   contains two exercises per body part.  You are performing each move for three sets and you are doing 8 rep per set.  The workout starts with shoulders and then moves on to biceps, triceps, chest and back.  After back, Kelly takes you through 4 rounds of a 30-second burnout.  This workout clocks in at 26:20. The workout uses a bench and variety of dumbbell. There are 8 premixes on this DVD that range in time from 14:38 to 30:13. Cardio Core - 3 & 1/2 stars Upper Body Supe

Build & Burn is Kelly Coffey-Myers first workout system.  Building on her 30-Minutes To Fitness workouts, Kelly develop 5 workouts on 3 DVDs.  Each workout is less than 30 minutes. Each DVD comes with many premix options. Build & Burn also comes with a 7 day meal plan. I really like the set for this group of workouts.  The set is clean, crisp and bright.  I also enjoyed the music in all the workouts. I will review the workouts in a separate blog post.

Disc 4 of Jessica Smith's Walk Strong 6 Week Total Transformation System contains your recovery and flexibility workouts.  The first workout is Dynamic Stretch . This workout is a slow moving total body stretch workout. I thought this workout was more of a static isolation stretch workout than a dynamic stretch workout. There are parts where Jessica includes some flow type movements but there is not a lot of it. The first 15 minutes of the workout is standing and the second half of the workout is floor based.  A mat and towel are used in this workout. The second workout is Prehab Routine .   This workout uses a chair, towel and mat.  Jessica states that this workout is focused on working the joints.  This is a total body workout that hits all the muscle groups that normally don't get worked out.  Jessica methodically moves through various rotating, stretching, and range of motion type exercises.  She starts with the neck and moves on to the shoulders, arms and wrist. Jes

Disc 2 of Jessica Smith's Walk Strong 6 Week System include the following workouts:  360 Abs, Brain Fitness Fun, and Barefoot Fusion Sculpt. 360 Abs starts off by doing approximately 10 minutes of cardio.  After the cardio, Jessica picks up a single weight for the toning segments.  There is a standing segment and a floor segment. A mat is also used. Brain Fitness Fun is a 30-minute steady state cardio workout that adds in brain teasers. The brain teasers come in the form of using multiple limbs in opposite ways at the same time. Jessica takes you through multiple mini-combos that she repeats before moving on to a different set up brain teasers.  Throughout the Brain Fitness Fun workout, there are pop up messages that display various tips and information about the brain and how fitness enhances brain functionality. Barefoot Fusion Sculpt is a ballet inspired sculpting workouts.  Jessica uses compounds moves that she repeats twice through for most moves. This worko

Disc 3 of the 6 Week Total Transformation System is your sculpt and strength DVD. This DVD contains three workouts.  The workouts are: Total Body Training Upper Body Strength Lower Body Sculpt Total Body Training combines upper and lower body movement.  Almost all moves are compound in nature.  Jessica uses a set of heavy and light dumbbells. For most exercises you are doing the moves twice through changing the lead side.  On some exercises, Jessica will add variation to the move.  So usually the leg part of the exercise is the same but the arms might be different. Upper Body Strength also uses two sets of weights.  It includes exercises for the five upper muscle groups plus abdominal exercises. Most of the exercises are isolation exercises and you are doing two sets. Lower Body Sculpt consist of a mixture of compound and isolation exercises. There are also standing and floor based exercises. Along with using two sets of dumbbells, this workout also uses a chair and m

Disc 1 of Jessica Smith's Walk Strong: The 6 Week Total Transformation System includes a Welcome to the Program and two cardio workouts. Workout 1 is Cardio Party and along with Jessica there are six cast members.   Jessica states that some of the cast members are community members.  Cardio Party is a steady state cardio workouts with more of a dance flair.  There is a variety of musical rhythms and genres.  Jessica does quite a bit of clapping in this workout. Jessica always takes you back to the base move of walking in place. She then tells you what you are going to do and then you do it. This workout does not really have a warm up but it does have a cool down stretch. Interval Mix is a high energy walking and functional strength (in the form of planks) workout.  In Interval Mix, Jessica takes you through four interval rounds.  Within each round, Jessica increases the intensity as she progresses through the round. Starting with a power walk, Jessica adds various moves to

Jessica Smith Walk Strong 6-Week Transformation System consist of ten 30 minute workouts on four discs. Disc 1 contains an eight minute Welcome to the Program segment.  Jessica also includes two written pamphlet. One pamphlet welcomes you to the program and includes ten tips on how you can get the most out of the program. The other pamphlet unfolds into a 6-week wall calendar. I will review the workouts in a separate post, but all workouts include a beginner modifier and a count down clock

December 2017 Monthly Rotation I am going to try to do a better job at getting the reviews out this month than I did last month. The workouts that I did not do, I will try to do them as add-ons sometime this month if there is time which hopefully there will be as I built in an extra rest day. For December, we have Jessica Smith Walk Strong 1. I just got Walk Strong 3 in the mail so figure I needed to do Walk Strong 1. Although, I guess it does not matter much as I have already done Walk Strong 2. The other DVDs I have on tap are a couple from Essentrics, Michelle Dozios new one and a few yoga workouts. Almost all workouts are around the 30 to 35 minute mark. This year has flown by and I am guessing this month will not be any different. Happy Exercising Everyone.

Trampoline Cardio clocks in at 29:30.  This is  a follow along the best you can type of workout.  The workout starts as soon as you hit play.  Tracy is already into the workout. There is about a 3 minute introduction where the music is turn down so that you can hear Tracy's voice over narrative. After she is done talking about the trampoline workout, the music gets louder. The set is greyed out so that all you see is Tracy jumping on the trampoline. It is hard to tell where the wall and floor intersect. This is not a big deal, just details for those of you who like those type of details. There is NO cuing at all.  I did not try to keep up with Tracy. What I did is follow a move behind. So if she starts with criss cross jacks, when she moved on to high knees, that is when I would do the criss cross jack and so on. That of course left me with one move I didn't get too because the workout just abruptly ends, but now that I  know the ending. I can plan for it when I did this

Tracy Anderson's Total Body Mini-Trampoline workout is a 50 minute workout. The workout is broken down as follows: Full Workout (51:30) Muscular Structure (26:30) Trampoline Front (12:04) Trampoline Back (12:54) The muscular structure segment includes standing and kneeling arms, abs, and thigh & buns work.  Tracy uses a pair of light dumbbells and a mat in the toning segment. She also uses the trampoline (mostly as a prop) in this segment.  Expect lots of reps for the leg exercises. The trampoline segments feature lots of kicks, jacks, mini jumps, and knee raises.  Tracy adds various arm movement throughout. This whole workout is a follow along workout.  There is absolutely no cuing what so ever. The only time Tracy talks is during the intro. I did like set and the soundtrack is awesome. Great music to workout too. There is a bit of a warm up but there is not a cool down or stretch. What do I say. It is Tracy. I have come to expect minimum cuing but this was

Eric Zimmer's Dance Workout is a 40 minute ballet inspired workout.  Eric takes you through a series of mini toning exercises each focused on a particular dance element. The segments are short, 2 to 3 minutes at the most. You perform the moves on one side and then you immediately switch to the other side before moving on to the next dance element. The workout does move fast and the moves are set to an up tempo rhythm that comes in and goes out as the segment ends and begins. Along with Eric, there are two other cast members in the ballet barre portion of the workout.   In the core conditioning, stretch, and cool down segments, it is only Eric. The workout is voice over and it is a really good voice over. I did not realize he was not live cuing until a quarter of the way through the workout. Some of the camera angles were a bit funky as we got several ceiling shots. Other than the ceiling shots, the set is just a bland canvas. Unless you saw the ceiling, it was hard to tell

Essentrics Full Body Toning is a 57 minute workout that is divided into two segments. There is a standing segment and a floor segment.  In this workout, Sahra, who is the only cast members, offer lots of form tips throughout the workout. At times I felt there were too many tips because she would stop the movement as she was giving the tip and that would interrupt my flow.  Other than that, this is a typical Essentrics workout with shoulder blast, plies, arm series and windmills for the standing segment and in the floor segment abs and quad series.  Both workouts include a nice extended stretch.  Sahra states this workout is a favorite of all students and it is the first workout instructors learn.  There is a great soundtrack in this one and the set is big and bright with lots of windows. 4 stars

November 2017 Monthly Rotation Hello All.  Here is to a good and productive November. I have been sick and I missed a couple of workouts last month. So I am moving those workouts to this month. November will feature Classical Stretch/Essentrics, Zumba, Tracy Anderson, Fitness Favorites Live workouts and Cardio Coach workouts.

Hard Body comes with two 45-minute circuit workouts.  There are six circuits per workout. Within the workout, Jillian will take you through the six circuits. After you complete the sixth circuit, you take it from the top, repeating all the circuits. The only difference is for some exercises where you focus on one side during the first go around, the second time through you work the opposite side.  Each circuit is composed of 3 to 5 exercises and includes a variety of athletic, body weight, drill-base, and yoga inspired moves. Some exercises are standing and some are floor based and a lot of the exercise are compound multi-component in nature.  Jillian adds dumbbells to certain exercises and she has a range of dumbbells - light, medium and heavy. There is a beginner modifier.  Level 1 clocks in at around 45 minutes and Level 2 clocks in at around 50 minutes. There is a DJ playing live music throughout the workout.  While I thought the music fine, I thought there were too many cl

MCM10K 2017 is in the books. It was a beautiful day for a run.  Lots and lots of people and lots of inspiring runners. Other than the race starting about 10 minutes late it was all good. 

Jillian Michael's Extreme Shed and Shred contains two roughly 40 to 45 minute circuit style workouts.  Both workouts share the same warm up and cool down. In fact Jillian gives you the option of combing the two.  The DVD menu offers the following: Level 1 Level 2 Level 1 & 2 Both workouts have a beginner modifier and a modifier who shows more advance moves.  In Level 1, you are doing four circuits and in Level 2, there are five circuits. The circuits feature a variety of exercise moves from cardio, strength, yoga, and kickboxing. Weights are used in these workouts. 3 & 1/2 stars for both workouts.

Yoga Inferno is Jillian's second yoga specific workout DVD.  This DVD contains two workouts both which are around 30 minutes. The setting for this DVD is the desert.  Jillian and the cast are wearing sunglasses because of how bright the sun is . The music is background, but there is a nice beat to it, a bit groovy. Sometimes I find the music used in yoga workouts on the blah side but not this one. There are two cast participants; one that shows a less intense version of the move and one participant shows advance progression.  Jillian teaches and demonstrate moves and she offers her brand of motivation. In Workout One , Jillian takes you through a warm up. After the warm up, there are roughly three series or circuits where you are moving through various yoga postures. Some moves are static and some are dynamic. Throughout each series, there are cardio intervals that last roughly 30 seconds. Jillian uses vinyasas as her transition move between exercises. Some moves are repeat

Cathe Road Trip Daytona 2017, hi all.  Here are some pictures from this year's Daytona RT. Cathe welcomes Cathletes View from hotel Saundra with Cathe One of 5 Indoor Classes Saturday Night Dinner Daytona Suna Daytona the Beach Beautiful Daytona Cathe cools us down